


A Surplus of Zombies

by misura



Category: Escort Mission - Cracked.com
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5417888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're playing <i>Plants vs Zombies</i> on your phone while he's blasting away at them with a machine gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Surplus of Zombies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



> no zombies were harmed in the writing of this fic
> 
> (although really, would you care if there were?)

You ask, "Want to do something fun together later tonight?"

He says, "Sure."

(In any other type of relationship story, this would constitute a date, but you're not That Girl, and he's not That Guy, and God, isn't the gaming industry just totally homophobic or what?)

You say, "Cool."

He's browsing through the fridge, looking for a slice of pizza that doesn't have mould on it (a joke, obviously; you already snagged the last piece earlier this morning). "Cool."

 

You're playing _Plants vs Zombies_ on your phone while he's blasting away at them with a machine gun. It's not really 'doing something fun together', except for that the part where it is.

His zombies look a lot cooler when they die. Re-die?

"So when you kill a zombie, what do you call that thing that they do?"

You like Peashooters, but you're beginning to wonder if maybe you should have invested in another Sunflower instead.

"Explode?" He switches to a machete and chops off some undead limbs - except that now, all of a sudden, there's a lot more blood, so maybe he's run into some real humans. Well, real, not-undead-and-reanimated humans.

Just because people are dead, that doesn't mean they're not human anymore. In most games, anyway.

"They don't _explode_." His do, but only when he shoots them. Yours just kind of fall apart.

Chain saw, now, which is kind of awesome, but also a tad unrealistic. Who's going to be carrying a fucking chain saw around during the zombie apocalypse? Those things weigh, like, a ton.

"Die," he says, switching back to a simple shotgun. You guess the fuel for the chain saw ran out or something. It happens. "Die, die, die."

Your Sunflowers are getting eaten by the zombies. Soon, they'll come stumbling into the house.

It's only the fifth time you've played this level. It's supposed to be one of the easier ones, before you get the pool and the mist and all that stuff.

"Yeah, but, see, the thing about a zombie is that it's someone who died and then came back to life. Unlife. Whatever. My point is, how can they die? They already did. That's why they're zombies."

The first zombie shuffles into your home. You wish you had a machine gun. Or a machete, or anything.

"So they die again. Dude, stop overthinking this. It's simple."

He picks up a small green box of ammo and his shotgun changes into a rocket launcher.

You die ingloriously, off-screen, in your own home.

You think that this is probably what would happen in real life, if the zombie apocalypse really happened.

(Well, okay, minus the whole part where you plant stuff in your garden to hold off the undead hordes. That's just unrealistic.)

 

He sleeps with his head in your lap and you think about blowjobs.

It's kind of a habit of his (the falling asleep on you, not the blowjobs), possibly because you tend to be on the couch next to him and the couch is in front of the TV, and the logistics of this situation are not rocket science.

You like sleeping in a bed. You think most people do. It's why the bed industry is a thing.

Probably, somewhere, there's a game about that. Bed Tycoon, or something. Building a bedroom furniture empire from scratch, possibly while fighting off terrorists and aliens.

You wouldn't want to be anywhere else than where you are right now.

 

"Kittens," you say. You've reached the pool levels by now.

You also wonder when your crazy neighbor is going to get turned into a zombie so that you'll have to kill him with flowers. You suspect the game wants you to get more emotionally attached to the character first. It's how things work. You're wise to these little tricks by now.

"Don't say it like that," he says. "It's a highly sophisticated text-based strategy game where you build a civilization from scratch. It's very realistic."

"Kittens." You're fighting off pole-vaulting zombies with cacti. You refuse to think that this disqualifies you in any way from having an opinion on a game that's about kittens.

"Will you knock it off? You start the game as a lonely kitten in a catnip forest, see? I just did a reset."

'You are a kitten in a catnip forest,' the screen says.

"Aww," you say. You like dogs. Not to the point where you'd actually want to get one, but still.

"Now I'm just going to run this little script right here, and I'm all set."

Your pool is covered in fog. There are zombies in the mist. Snorkeling zombies. Football jock zombies. Truck driving zombies. "Wait. You're going to _cheat_?"

"It's an autoclicker," he says. "Using an autoclicker isn't cheating."

You have no idea what an autoclicker is. You wish you could have lived in a house without a pool in the backyard. What's wrong with, say, a barbed wire barrier instead?

"So what does it do? No, wait, let me guess." You're not an idiot, and you need a distraction, because if you think about it logically and rationally, it would be totally cool to live in a house with a pool.

You could go swimming when it's hot, instead of staying indoors, complaining about the heat.

"It automatically clicks on stuff so you don't have to," he says. "It makes the game more fun."

You plant some Sunflowers and Peashooters. At some point, you're going to have to do something about the pool, but right now, you just don't feel like it.

"Did you just build a library?"

"It gives me more science points so I can research things," he says. "Like a calendar and maths and parchment and stuff. I told you, it's very realistic."

"So ... what's in the library? I mean, if you haven't invented parchment yet, it can't be books. Right?"

"It's symbolic," he says.

There are zombies in the pool by now. "More, like, premature." You realize that you're screwed.

"It's not premature. See? I just observed a rare astronomical occurrence in the night sky."

Your character screams like the proverbial little girl you really hope you aren't. Given how often you've died, you think you'd feel kind of uncomfortable if it turned out you were, like, twelve - even if you suppose it would explain the lack of alternate weapons of zombie destruction.

Maybe the game is all just a dream. A fantasy. Maybe she's just having a nightmare and the scream means that she woke up, brains uneaten, zombies safely held back by the barbed wire barrier in the backyard.

You kind of don't want to replay the pool level. You wish you could skip it.

"Now I'm going to research archery and then the game will give me a zebra. And unicorns."

"Yeah, okay," you say, considering whether or not you want to replay one of the earlier, supposedly easier levels. It'd kind of suck if you died in them. "You win. That's truly a very realistic game."

"The zebra's, like, a total badass," he says. "Great hunter."

You give up. You got over Solitaire a long time ago, even those new versions, like Faerie Tale Solitaire and Apocalypse Solitaire and Regency Solitaire, which was recommended to you by a female friend.

"So hey, you want to do something together?" you ask, putting away your phone. "Like, _together_ together?"

"Sure," he says. "See? That's what so great about autoclickers. It means you can play this game _and_ do other stuff at the same time."

 

You eat pizza while watching a show with zombies in it on Netflix.

Tomato sauce and blood look nothing alike. You have always known this. Your enjoyment of pizza and your enjoyment of pizza are not connected in any way.

"I got to get at seven tomorrow, so I think I'm going to turn in early," you say. It's almost ten.

"Okay," he says. He's back to killing zombies, or possibly rabid rival survivors. The first will want to eat his brains; the second, every single part of him. It's that kind of game.

You say, "Good night."

He says, "Night."

You know you'll feel a little cheated, coming in here tomorrow morning to find him asleep on the couch by himself, but it can't be helped. You really _do_ need to get up early tomorrow.

Unlike some people, you happen to have a life that revolves around other things than gaming.

On the other hand, "Well, one last round."

He says, "Cool," passing you the controller.

**Author's Note:**

> the kittens game really exists. you can find it [ here](http://www.bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/). it involves undead unicorns at some point, so I felt it fit the theme, and also I may be slightly addicted to this game.
> 
> Plants vs Zombies also really exists, but depending on the version you get, the sound of your character screaming may vary. or so I've been told.


End file.
